Canada, an employment leader
In the latest OECD outlook on employment, Canada clearly stood out for its good performance. It ranked 7th world-wide, just after the Nordic countries, Switzerland and New Zealand, with an employment-to-population ratio of almost 73% in 2007, or more than 6 points above the OECD average.
Canada also managed to combine productivity increases with job growth—a result qualified by the OECD as “remarkable” since a rise in the employment rate usually brings down productivity. Over the past decade, Canada outstripped the U.S. in growth of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
The healthy Canadian labour market also benefited the most vulnerable players: we set records with one of the highest female employment rates; only the Nordic countries and Switzerland did better. Young people also fared well, with higher numbers employed than most other countries, due in part to the large number of students holding down jobs. And there is no sign that jobs were more insecure—the proportion of workers starting a new job during the previous year fell from 23% in 1995 to 21% in 2005.
The low labour tax rate affecting work was one of the reasons suggested by the OECD to explain the good Canadian results. Taxes accounted for 35% of labour costs, versus 40% on average in the OECD area.
Salary inequities continued to increase, as in most OECD countries. Of all the countries studied, only Spain and Ireland did not show an increase in the gap between the richest and the poorest workers over the past decade. In Canada, low-wage employment is common and the inequalities higher than the OECD average.